Musings of a Snickerdoodle

 "True spiritual illumination comes from Scripture,  which is 'profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for every good work' (2 Tim. 3: 16-17).  As the man of God is equipped for every good work, we see that Scripture is not only indispensable, but also sufficient.  No other supposed sources of truth need be consulted to receive the spiritual illumination necessary for salvation. "  Victor Kuligin The Language of Salvation: Discovering the Riches of What it Means to be Saved Find more quotes on my quotes blog: http://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

…Spurgeon observed many, 'who, by hearing continually the most precious doctrine that belief in Jesus Christ is saving, have forgotten other truths, and have concluded that they were saved when they were not, have fancied they believed when as yet they were total strangers to the experience which was not grounded upon the divine word rightly understood, 'nor proved by any facts in their own souls.'  They resented any suggestion of self examination by gospel tests as 'an assault upon their assurance' and 'defended their false peace by the notion that to raise a question about their certain salvation would be unbelief.' Their ill-placed certainty has put them in a hopeless condition and they ignore biblical warnings and admonitions by 'their fatal persuasion that it is needless to attend to them.'  Their historical knowledge of the work of Christ has settled them in a conviction 'that godly fear and careful walking are superfluities, if not actuall...

"If any man in the world needs the special presence of God with them and His blessing in order to succeed, certainly ministers do.  For what is the design and end of their ministry? Is it not to open the eyes of sinners to turn them from darkness to light?  And from the power of sin and Satan to God and Christ? And who is sufficient for these things? In a work of this nature, what can ministers, of themselves, do? Verily, they may preach even to paleness and faintness, until the bellows are burnt, until their lungs and vitals are consumed, and their hearers will never be the better; not one sinner will be converted until God is graciously pleased, by the efficacious working of His Spirit, to add His blessing to their labors and make his word, in the mouth of the preacher, sharper than any two-edged sword in the heart of the hearer.  All will be vain, to no saving purpose, until God is pleased to give the increase. And in order to do this, God looks for their prayers, to c...

I really wanted to like this book but it was quite disappointing.  It's sobering, definitely; maybe even motivating.  But…how do I put this? It's not very encouraging. Guinness does not come across as someone who believes that salvation is found in faith in Christ alone. He seems to believe that ethnic (or religious?) Jews will be saved whether or not they believe that Jesus is the Messiah, God in the flesh, Who takes away sin and gives us His righteousness.  At first I thought that maybe I was just reading too much into some of his statements, like this one " Both Jews and Christians owe their salvation entirely to God - Jews in terms of their national exodus from Egypt and Christians in terms of their personal exodus from lostness" .  But then it became clearer along the way and he made statements like,  "There are no more realistic faiths than Judaism and the Christian faith, but Jews and Christians live with an undimmed hope ev...

Long Before Luther by Nathan Busenitz is book that examines history to demonstrate that the concepts of Salvation by faith alone, through grace alone…etc. were not invented by people like Martin Luther and John Calvin in the 16th Century, as some have claimed.  Rather these concepts are very old, coming from the Scriptures themselves. As the subtitle of this book indicates, this book traces " the heart of the Gospel from Christ to the Reformation". The book is divided into four parts, part one is, " The Reformers and Justification", which examines what the Reformers believed and where they discovered those beliefs in the Bible.   Part Two deals with the " Church Before Augustine" . "The Reformers looked primarily to Scripture to establish their understanding of justification by grace through faith alone, yet they also claimed secondary affirmation for their position from the writings of Christian leaders throughout church history."   Thi...

I am consistently struck during my travels how a bond is immediately created with other believers, regardless of the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic differences between us.    In many respects, this bond is stronger than the biological bonds that exist between father and son, or mother and daughter.  In face, Jesus plainly says that his advent will break such biological bonds, and if we are not willing to forsake these natural relationships when necessary, we have no business seeking a supernatural relationship with Christ.     - Victor Kuligin Quote from his book : The Language of Salvation:  Discovering the Riches of What it Means to Be Saved See more quotes on my quote collection blog:   https://snickerdoodlesquotes.blogspot.com/

Martin Luther by Simonetta Carr i s a nice overview of the life of Luther for children.   It starts with Luther's birth and moves on through his life as a child in schooling and then on to his college days, where the thunderstorm happens that scares him into a monastic life where perhaps he could earn his way to Heaven.  As a Monk we learn that Luther was very meticulous and very much into examining his own thoughts and motives for sin; his ritualistic confession of his sins grew so frequent (sometimes happening just moments after he had  confessed other sins) that it irritated his superiors who then "told him to confess only big sins."  Luther ultimately is promoted to higher positions, moving on to the city of Wittenberg to be a professor of Bible studies. Ultimately he also ends up preaching in the city church as well as "supervising ten monasteries".  Tetzel comes into Germany with his indulgences and as a consequence Luther writes his "ninety-...

From Heaven:   A 28-day Advent Devotional with excerpts from the works of A.W. Tozer, is one of the strangest devotionals I have ever encountered (though I haven't looked at or read many).   Strange in a good way though.   When I think of devotionals, I think of generally light portions of readings per day, with a verse of Scripture that is contemplated at a high level and that is then meant to be applied to oneself in an extremely personal way.   Tozer's devotional, like any devotional, has a small reading for any given day, but the content of the reading is anything but small and goes much further than provoking one to mere introspection, it provokes one to contemplate the true awesomeness of our God and His love and grace. There are things in this devotional that I was delightfully surprised to see in a Christmas devotional (or any devotional for that matter), like, " Put the emphasis where the Bible puts it, on the Christ at the right hand of God, not on the...

Fool's Talk:   Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion by Os Guinness is quite a convicting book, a book that really makes you   think about how serious we really are about evangelism/apologetics.   It provokes the question:   how much thought do we really put in our conversations (or even our small-talk) with unbelievers?   Do we hold back on saying anything related to the Gospel because we are ashamed of being considered foolish because of our belief in God's Word?   Or if we do evangelize, are we just sticking with simple pre-contrived evangelization questions like, "If you were to die today and stood before God and He asked you why He should let you into Heaven, what would you say?"   Are we willing to truly put thought into persuading someone of the truth of Christianity, giving answers to their questions, and asking thought-provoking questions ourselves, rather than merely turning to someone else's pre-designed method of evangelism.   D...

Short Answers to Big Questions about God, the Bible and Christianity by Clinton E. Arnold and Jeff is just what its title declares it to be, it is an endeavor to answer, in only a few pages, many questions new Christians, or unbelievers, have about God, the Bible or Christianity.   The book is not as good as I had hoped it would be.   My main problem with it is its presentation of the relationship/interaction between God and mankind.     First, its discussions of the love of God toward people are presented too much like the modern concept of "falling in love", an uncontrolled, "couldn't help it" type of thing.   Here are a few quotes to demonstrate what I mean:   "God isn't just loving, he is love……And he isn't just a loving person 'in theory'; he literally, at this very moment, is aware of his deep love for you. " and, "he loves you because he created   you…If   you have a child,   you have felt this love before; you don...

The Printer and the Preacher: Ben Franklin, George Whitefield, and the Surprising Friendship that Invented America by Randy Peterson   is a book that attempts to explore the friendship of George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin and how that relationship affected the coming united American states.   I have read some biographies on Whitefield (Dallimore's) and knew of Franklin's correspondence with Whitefield, and thought that the topic of this book looked interesting.   Sadly, this book did not satisfy my hopes.   First, though the author's writing style is not boring it is too unorganized for my taste.   I have read books before where the narrative goes back and forth through time and I know that this can be done in an interesting, yet still unconfusing way, but this book does not do it well.   On any given page, especially towards the first half of the book, one can be in Franklin's early life, then his later, or in Whitefield's early life, or his lat...

Ulrich Zwingli, by William Boekestein is, as the series is titled, a "Bitesize Biography" but there is a good amount of content in that 'bite'.   Despite this biography's size, it gives a lot of information to Zwingli. It actually seems to 'introduce' you to him as opposed to making you a mere acquaintance of his life.   The things I most remember about Zwingli, from other books and sources on him, are that he died in a not-so justifiable battle/war and that he debated and opposed Luther on the presence of Christ in the 'Lord's Table'.   I've found out that there were several things I didn't know about his life, these things include sanctifying works of God in and through his life such as his doing away with preaching on Bible texts assigned by the Catholic Church, and opting for a verse by verse, book by book method of preaching instead. On the negative side, there were the manifestations of the sinful 'remnants' of...

Having read the unabridged Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas I was interested to see that there was an abridged version and was curious to see how the abridged version would compare to the original.   It was a nice attempt, but it definitely isn't even half as good.   For one thing, it seemed choppy at parts, for instance, at one point, the Nazi party is a small minority party in the government and then all of a sudden Hitler is in power. As far as I can recollect, It didn't really talk about the growth of the Nazis like the other one did.   I understand that in order for it to be 'abridged' lots of things would have to be 'cut', but I thought that it should have had a little bit more of the background of what was going on politically in Germany just for clarities sake.   And another example of its 'choppiness' was where Bonhoeffer declares that he won't go to the 'Fano' conference if a particular 'Reich-church' leader went too, and then w...

World War II England, and in particular, WWII London, was an intimidating place to be; itt seems that around 40,000 civilians in total were killed in England during the war.   During this time, when many bombs were being dropped by Nazi Germany on the civilian population, the director and the assistant director of the BBC's Religious Broadcasting department, James Welch and Eric Fenn, were searching for someone to draw people to the religious programs they were broadcasting on the BBC's radio station which were apparently being passed by in deference to stations/programs that were entertaining.   C. S. Lewis was the man they ended up recruiting.   C. S. Lewis and Mere Christianity by Paul McCusker is the story of how C. S. Lewis' book, Mere Christianity came to be.   It took a little bit for me to get used to the way the book was put together.   The story is told, not by mere sequence of events, but also by 'flashbacks' to C. S. Lewis' history, and consta...

In Robots or Rebels, Robert Pruitt addresses the modern manifestation of legalism that has been around since the Church first appeared in the times of the Apostles, the ones stuck in true legalism he calls 'Robots'.   He also warns about rebels, who turn from legalism and flee to antinomianism.   As he says in the book, " "Rebels do not love Christ and do not desire to look holy before anyone.   Robots, on the other hand, desire to look holy while not realizing that true holiness only flows from the heart and life of one who sincerely loves the Lord Jesus. "        "Too many preachers and teachers today proclaim a gospel that saves from the penalty of sin, while not necessarily saving one from bondage to sin."   This leads to many who profess faith but who have no works, no holiness, to show that they are actually alive.   They do not have any evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in them, no evidence that they are among the ones Go...

"Don't confuse the gospel with the effects of the Gospel." writes Trevin Wax. Elsewhere he notes that , "…Christianity is not a scheme of morality, nor a plan for social and political change, and organizations which propose improvements along such lines are only 'tinkering with the problems.   We may be made better men, but before we can face God we must be new men."   So many churches today don't believe that the Gospel, as given in God's Word, is right for today. They think that it needs to be updated to fit our culture.   Wax does a good job of analyzing the various counterfeit gospels of our day: the Therapeutic Gospel, the Activist Gospel, the Churchless Gospel…etc. he shows how many of these take one fact of the Gospel and preach it, mostly disembodied from the other essential truths that make up the Gospel.   These people are, 'missing the mark' of the complete Gospel', which description, ironically, is one of the definitions ...